Parenting doesn’t always come naturally. This book offers expert guidance for caregivers who struggle with parenting because of adversity in their own lives, or simply because they are raising kids in an increasingly stressful world.       As parents and caregivers we want to help our kids through everything, including difficult or disturbing experiences. But if we or our child have experienced adversity or trauma, this can be especially challenging. How do we know whether we are providing our child or teen with too much structure or not enough? How do we provide discipline that is effective but not overly harsh? How do we teach our kids to be resilient and manage their feelings when we have trouble managing our own?   Drawing on their extensive knowledge of ACEs (adverse childhood experiences) and PACEs (protective childhood experiences), psychologists Morris and Hays-Grudo describe a balanced parenting approach to help parents manage these tricky balancing acts with confidence.       Each chapter describes a key stage in a child’s life, from babyhood through the teen years and highlights behaviors that are age-typical but often challenging for parents. Real-life examples and self-help activities and quizzes bring the material to life, and a rich resources section provides additional sources of help.

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) can negatively influence development. However, the lifelong effects of positive childhood experiences (PACEs) can mitigate the detrimental effects of adverse ones. By integrating existing knowledge about (ACEs) with developmental research on preventing, buffering, and treating the effects of adversity, stress, and trauma on child development and subsequent health and functioning, this book identifies the most important of these (PACEs). It provides an interdisciplinary lens from which to view the multiple types of effects of enduring childhood experiences, and recommends evidence-based approaches for protecting children and repairing the enduring negative consequences of (ACEs) they face as adults. Students, researchers, clinicians, and health-care providers can use this research to understand the science of early life adversity, lifelong resilience, and related intervention and prevention programming to help those suffering from the lifelong effects of (ACEs). Chapters include many figures, graphs, diagrams, stories, and activities that aim to help readers apply the science to everyday life.